Google will delete browsing data the company collects on Chrome users who believe their data is not being collected while using it Stealth modeaccording to a new report wall street journal on Monday.The move is part of a settlement with consumers who first filed lawsuits in 2020 after it was revealed that the use of Stealth mode There’s nothing stopping Google from collecting vast amounts of data about a specific user’s browsing history.
Details of the class-action settlement, which were filed in federal court on Monday, will see Google destroy “billions of data points” from private browsing and force the company to “update its disclosures about the information it collects in private browsing,” Wall Street reports . Street magazine. The settlement will also allow users to disable third-party cookies in incognito settings.
Google reached a preliminary settlement in December 2023, avoiding a trial, but the settlement still needs to be approved by a judge. Monday’s settlement does not include any payments to individual users, but people will still be able to make personal financial claims in the future.
From the Wall Street Journal:
The court granted class certification for the injunctive relief sought in the lawsuit, but did not grant class certification for the plaintiffs’ economic damages. This means affected users will need to file separate lawsuits against Google. A lawsuit was filed in California court on Thursday on behalf of 50 individuals, alleging invasion of privacy.
As the Wall Street Journal points out, internal communications from Google executives show that the company knows that consumer perceptions of “private” incognito browsing don’t exactly match reality.
“Our marketing efforts for Incognito have been limited because it’s not truly private and therefore requires very vague hedging language, which is almost more damaging,” Google chief marketing officer Lorraine Twohill wrote in a note. 2019 Email Unearthed during the proceedings.
Google, for its part, hailed the terms of the settlement as a victory and noted that it didn’t have to pay the billions of dollars it originally sought.